Karpol: Lunatics – That’s What I Need

Paperback: 130 pages

Publisher: Kapitol

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9537093263

ISBN-13: 978-9537093266

Dimensions: 7.8 x 4.9 x 0.5 inches

A number of coaches, in their desire to produce a book with as many pages as possible, have written about thing that everyone knows. I decided to talk about only the things that I am sure no one or very few people know.

However, a player can be taller, we can make her grow, by training, by up to two or three centimetres, and if we are able to allow the child to train in a variety of climates, then even more. Precisely, changing climates encourages growth by a few centimetres, and so we spend some time in the Urals, a little in Croatia… By exercising and changing climates we can add four to six centimetres. Electro-magnetic fields also influence human growth and they vary in different parts of globe.

I will describe one of the exercises my girls do for stamina. They go up to six hundred metres by car, run to the top of a hill of a thousand metres and then run down. It would be impossible to tell someone to do four thousand squats. Who could do four thousand squats? The effort needed for running those four hundred metres uphill is equivalent to the effort used by the body doing four thousand squats, and this is how you gain both strength and stamina. This exercise is also good for the ligaments, the knees and ankles.I do not accept the idea of mentalities … If I were to say that Brazilians are said to be undisciplined, when Pele did not drink champagne even at his own wedding. Pele was professional, like Beckenbauer, or Platini … What I need is a professional mentality. It is possible to chose a team with a professional mentality from every nation.

Very few men will free their wives of work in the home – tidying, cleaning, cooking, washing… to say nothing of looking after the children. Maybe one man in a thousand is ready to take these duties on himself instead of his wife. That is why I, as that one in a thousand men, and the girls as necessary go away to camp. Quarantine is the wrong word, I take them to camp where they can devote themselves to training. Camp is primarily useful for adults, and most of all to married women. For the younger ones it is not so useful, since young girls do not have so many obligations at home.I begin matches not intending to substitute any of the players. Maybe someone will say that is too ambitious to want to play every match with just six players. But who can substitute a marathon runner?

It is harder to work with women than with men since you have to constantly fight against the female psyche. Technique, the game, training, you do all the same things with men or women, but the male and female psyches are completely different. It is hard with one woman, to say nothing of having constant control over fifteen or twenty of them. At the men’s competition at the Olympic Games in Barcelona, first and second places were won by coaches who had once worked with women, for they had a better understanding of psychology than anyone.

When we come down (or should I say rise up!) from the general level to work with women, then we must understand that the basic difference in the psyche of men and women is that we have to approach men, in all phases of their involvement with sport, as the head of the family. Their priority is money. They enjoy fame, but it is less important. On the other hand women are in sport most frequently because they want to prove themselves, to come out of the shadows.

The thing that motivates them most is love. The two things that are most important to women are attention and men.

To work well is normal, to work badly is not normal. If someone does something very well, they should be praised. After the match against China in the semi-finals of the Olympic Games in Seoul, when we won 3-0 (0,9,2) in what I believe was the best match played by any team ever, I did not praise my girls especially. Our aim was to win the championships, which later we did and that deserved praise. When I praised them I wanted to teach them something again: «You worked really, really hard and you won. Use your lives,» I told them.

Smirnova has a grandmother whom she loves very much. She could not smash the ball in the match against Peru in the finals at the Seoul Olympics. It just would not work. In the break when Peru was leading 2-0 and 12-6 in the third set, I asked her, «What would your grandmother say if we lost?» She nearly broke down in tears. I asked her again and she started to cry, «Come on, go and play for your granny,» I told her. And she played like never before. But you can use these, I won’t say weak, but strong points that players have only once. Sometimes you have to wait years for the right moment, determine when it is important enough to use what you know.

Before the final of the Champions’ Cup in Zagreb I gave the Mladost players an ordinary sugar tablet and told them that it was a cure for nerves. It worked!

I discovered an expert in somatology called Stanislav Peharec, and now many people tell me that this does not tie in with my conservativism.

The way the game is organised is based on science, mathematics, mathematical game theories which are based on mathematical analysis, function theory and differential calculus.

You should never punish girls with financial fines. You could make them do some extra exercises at training sessions, but the best way is to embarrass them, make their consciences speak to them.

I often shout from the bench, but I don’t do it to make the girls afraid of me. The younger ones, who don’t yet know me so well maybe are afraid, but the older ones certainly aren’t. I have never lost control when I shout, I always have a reason. I monitor the situation from the bench, both my own players and the opposition. To play well, it is necessary for them all to feel the burden equally, have the same «voltage». However they usually do not feel the burden equally, but by shouting I make sure they do, I help them by shouting. It also helps them to concentrate fully. When I shout they can hear my instructions from the bench, which would not be the case if I did not yell. When I shout it is supportive. Sometimes it shocks my girls’ opponents, but that is all part of my tactics. By shouting I can motivate a player who is having an off day.

I need self-confident women who will not admit to any greater authority than themselves, and everyone else who works with me needs to be like that too. Those around them should see them as «lunatics». They must be great in the sense that they are so completely self-confident. I tell my girls if they can’t settle with their husbands the details of travel arrangements, matches and competitions, they cannot be the best in the world. A woman may be tall, fast, strong… but she can’t win. Only when she is capable of being the boss in the family is she able to be the best in the world. I need strong people.The thing I am most proud of is that in more than 30 years of top level sport, all my girls have had babies – that is my greatest success … most of them are stronger then men, but they remained women and have children. Forget all the medals, that is what really makes me proud.